BRZ Rally Car

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to 759NRNG :

It's everything I wanted- truly the modern version of the FC RX7 we started out rallying in.  The only time I miss the Merkur is when I want to hit a big jump with zero regard for the landing. 

so this is the quandary you currently find yourself in with the shocks/springs cocktail...easily rectified or no????

In reply to 759NRNG :

Not sure yet, the current rear setup should be an improvement but we'll need a real jump to test it on.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to 759NRNG :

Not sure yet, the current rear setup should be an improvement but we'll need a real jump to test it on

Will that happen before the end of this year event wise???

In reply to 759NRNG :

Unlikely, our first event next year should be Sno*Drift if all goes well, so we may need to find a test jump elsewhere.  First, there's a whole bunch more cleaning, repainting, and maintenance to do. 

A few awesome mud photos from Tyler Powers:

Slow going since the mud STILL isn't gone after three pressure washes in varying states of disassembly.   Cleaned and regreased the struts, they seem to be holding up pretty well:

Changed the front bumpstops out from foam to rubber- I'm hoping this helps keep the skidplate off the ground a little more:

Also changed the air filter (mud didn't make it that far luckily) and the engine, transmission, and differential oil.  All looked pretty good except for the transmission, which was a little sparkly- we should pick up a spare.  We're now running Motul across the board, with 300v in the engine and Gear 300 in the other spinny bits, hoping that buys some reliability. 

Disassembled some other stuff for paint, the fuel line protection is holding up great but starting to look a little patchy:

Changed the lower spherical bearings on the rear shocks... they needed it:

Added 5 weld nuts per side to the rear wheel wells- 3 for mud flap, 2 for bumper.   The bumper ones are on "backwards" so they can poke through the plastic alignment thingies like so:

Allowing me to bolt the bumper on like this:

And gave the wheel wells another coat of white to try and stay ahead of all the bare metal that gravel use creates:

This is probably the last time I can get away with shortening the Yoshimura, once I cut away the damage there wasn't a whole lot of canister left:

Welded up a replacement for the rear section of the exhaust, this is all 16ga tubing now and the oval section where it passes under the subframe is made out of 1.5" roll cage tubing split down the middle and widened to make what is hopefully a pretty strong chunk right where things keep hitting it.  Apart from that spot, it's all higher than the diff skidplate now:

While I've been working on the car, Sara has been chipping away hardened mud in all the spots the power washer can't reach.   There's a lot of it:

A bunch of reassembly and it's back on the ground again, I'm hoping for it to stay driveable like this between all of the little projects over the winter:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Maybe a silly thought, but how hard would it be to maybe fabricate a channel in the body above the rear suspension cradle, thus getting the exhaust up and away from damage?  

In reply to Ian F (Forum Supporter) :

It'd actually be pretty easy if the fuel tank wasn't in the way- but the fuel tank is very, very in the way.  If we ever switch to a fuel cell I'm totally doing that, though.  Or if they change the L2WD rules in a way that lets me dump the exhaust out the side somewhere I'll do that.

So, with the 2021 ARA season wrapping up, how'd we do?

3rd isn't bad for the first year with a new car- I believe Santiago and Gruszka are both planning to run a bunch of events next year, and so far they seem to be faster than we are.  Some of the other teams on this list might be faster too, but as the chart shows there are a lot of events and you can finish right next to somebody without ever actually going head to head.  There are also rumors of Kevin Schmidt rejiggering his RX7 to get back into Limited instead of Open 2wd; either way, there should be some tight competition next year.  It would also be nice to try and end up higher in the overall eastern regional championship, where we finished pretty far back.

So what for next year?  Well, as far as I know 5 events count and you drop points for the rest, so we should try to run 5.  That's expensive but right now possible as long as nothing disastrous happens, and the tentative plan is to try and make it to Sno*Drift, 100 Acre Wood, SOFR, NEFR, and STPR, but if one of those needs to be dropped for whatever reason maybe LSPR as well.  Should be a busy year!

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Well done! 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

So, with the 2021 ARA season wrapping up, how'd we do?

3rd isn't bad for the first year with a new car- I believe Santiago and Gruszka are both planning to run a bunch of events next year, and so far they seem to be faster than we are.  Some of the other teams on this list might be faster too, but as the chart shows there are a lot of events and you can finish right next to somebody without ever actually going head to head.  There are also rumors of Kevin Schmidt rejiggering his RX7 to get back into Limited instead of Open 2wd; either way, there should be some tight competition next year.  It would also be nice to try and end up higher in the overall eastern regional championship, where we finished pretty far back.

So what for next year?  Well, as far as I know 5 events count and you drop points for the rest, so we should try to run 5.  That's expensive but right now possible as long as nothing disastrous happens, and the tentative plan is to try and make it to Sno*Drift, 100 Acre Wood, SOFR, NEFR, and STPR, but if one of those needs to be dropped for whatever reason maybe LSPR as well.  Should be a busy year!

 

We finished 27th in Open lol. But had we finished that last stage at STPR and held position, we would have been tied for 7th. Go figure. But yeah, good point about competing against people you never actually see. I mean, Dantes won the championship and I'm pretty sure I've never actually run in the same rally as him....ever. 

Wonder why Kevin would make the change, though. He finished 3rd in Open and was always at the top of the field. 

Guess we'll see you at NEFR and nowhere else on the ARA schedule, since I think we're only doing that one ARA event as current plans stand. Maybe I'll come crew. 

Not much work done on the car this weekend, I repainted the underside and washed the top side yet again but mostly did a bunch of cleaning in the shop.

Here's our social media season wrapup post for those who only read here on the forum:

2021 Rally Words In 2020, we decided to finally build the rally car we had been thinking and talking about for a long time - newer and better than anything we'd had before, but still with clever solutions replacing expensive ones wherever possible. So the nicest, lowest mileage car we've ever owned received homebrew rally suspension from multiple sources, a differential containing three different decades of Toyota parts plus few from Tractor Supply, and a junkyard engine along with a variety of other modifications.

2021 rallies started with Sara and Adam Kimmett on the podium at Sno*Drift in LN4WD, course car duties at Sandblast and Bristol, a cage from 9HIO and even more prep work, followed almost immediately by being hit while driving through town. The body damage was repaired in record time thanks to our extended network of racing friends, and pretty soon it was time to put the car to the test at SOFR, where our results there were nothing special but the car performed well despite issues with our tow vehicle and the rally itself. Some suspension tweaks, a little testing, and NEFR was next up- having proven that the car wasn't going to spontaneously fall apart, we decided to try to go faster and to our surprise as much as anyone else's it worked! We collected our first ever class win, and got to stand on the podium and spray champagne for the first time. At STPR, we pushed harder, broke some stuff, but yet again managed a class win and got the podium experience all over again!

This leaves us in third place in East Region Limited 2wd for the year, a position we landed in not by always being particularly fast but by not having breakage costing time. Still, every event it at least feels like we're getting faster. We couldn't ask for much more from this new car made of best guesses, and after years of broken cars and mechanical messes it's so fun to actually be playing the game and competing- thank you so, so much to all of our friends who have helped make this possible.

The plan is to keep refining the car, do more events, and hopefully get faster next year. See you at Sno*Drift!

No updates on the BRZ this week, but that doesn't mean that the shop was idle- 9HIO's Adam Brock was at our place caging this Impreza wagon for Dan Shirley:

I think Dan will have this thing finished in no time, and of course it's always good to have Adam and Mudflap around:

Pulled seats to assess the floor damage from a particularly large rock at Rausch:

Clean, hammer, weld, paint:

Seats go back in:

Not exciting, but necessary after an event like that.  Have to think about whether to reinforce the floor, and if so how to do it. 

do you have HDPE sheet underneath the floors?  IMO much more effective than sheet metal reinforcement since it doesn't dent. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Only under the gas tank, I was thinking either HDPE or just welding another layer of metal on.  It's a surprisingly small area that actually gets hit consistently, but it's directly under both seats so I should probably do something about it.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Steel rails with hdpe on the bottom so you can pull some killer tricks at the skatepark too?

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and my car is far closer to an limited spec than it is to an open, if people keep going big power big tire big aero i may just de-class myself but only if I plan to do a national limited run. it would be fun to beat rich kids in prepp'd fiestas with an 80s E36 M3box

plus the limited field is starting to heat up more than open, right now if you do more events = you win. its not as bad as 2019 but not as many people are doing a "full season" so to speak the open field is really only several people and you can win a championship without having to really face the others by entering in strategic events far away from the other competitors.  kinda  a geographic game goin on since there is no midwest region, its East of the rockies and thats it. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Steel rails with hdpe on the bottom so you can pull some killer tricks at the skatepark too?

that's what my car has. angle iron run all the way down the rocker pinch seam, and weldnuts on it to attach the outer edge of the HDPE sheets to. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

That sounds like it would work amazing. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

That sounds like it would work amazing. 

I use the same thing, works great. 

Plastic, you say?  High density polyethylene specifically:

Luckily the car more or less already had provisions for this, with a decent number of weld nuts in the floor and the angle iron on the pinch welds I just had to drill and tap a few holes and none of them go through to the interior.  For fasteners, I've been reclaiming plenty of these flanged shoulder bolts from other Subarus in the junkyard:

They have 10mm heads and are used in most places that plastic is attached to metal on newer Subarus.

Then just a bunch of cutting, drilling, and heat gunning later we have big plastic floor panels:

They don't reduce the ground clearance much and there are no new noises driving around, durability TBD.  One thing I'm sure about is that I should find better M6 weld nuts, these McMaster ones I've been using are annoyingly easy to strip out. 

That looks substantially thinner than the stuff I use. I'll be interested in seeing how it holds up (becuase if it holds up well, I could do to lose some weight).